The Morning Kickoff: Youth, Twitter hoaxes and De Ro drama

With the additional roster spots created by Major League Soccer (four of which are dedicated to developmental players) many teams are likely to sign promising academy players to pro contracts. Sporting Kansas City did it this year with Jon Kempin; 12 other teams have also gone this route. And there might be more on the way. Goal.com yesterday had a piece on several young academy prospects on the cusp of signing with an MLS team. Sporting KC academy product Jordan Rideout was one of them. Rideout was one of three academy players to train with the team this summer. [Source: Goal.com

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• Former Sporting Kansas City midfielder Herculez Gomez started a mild uproar (not sure if that’s possible, but I like the wording) on Twitter when he declared that he had signed with Major League Soccer and was coming back to the States. I got excited. I like Herc. He’s a hard-working, funny guy. But, alas, yesterday was Dia de Los Inocentes, the Spanish equivalent of April Fool’s Day. He's not coming back to the USA.

But an interesting thing happened... When confronted with the information that Sporting Kansas City still holds his rights, he claimed “not true.” Though, it is true. MLS has such a complicated and convoluted contract process that not even a recent ex-MLS player knows who owns his rights in the league. (For the record, Kansas City

does own Gomez’s rights. If he wants to come back to the league, KC would get first crack at signing him.) [Source: AOL Fanhouse

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• Wow, the Dwayne De Rosario stuff from Scotland is still pretty interesting. So, apparently De Ro went on trial with Celtic. Then he was "just on trial." Toronto and MLS apparently didn't know about this and denied he was on trial and were, obviously, a little miffed that one of MLS' biggest stars was training with another team without permission. Now both MLS and TFC have contacted Celtic to allow him to train with Celtic. This could be a total disaster for TFC/MLS. [Source:

• There is an MLS player that Celtic is willing to sign and apparently has permission, Freddie Ljungberg. Celtic might spend $2.3 million for 18 months on the former Seattle/Chicago midfielder. [Source: